UK experts’ shoddy job causes Ghana 110 MW

Ghana’s energy sector has suffered yet another jolt as officials are forced to shut down part of the Aboadze Thermal Plant on Thursday.

The action follows revelations that a team of experts from the UK at a huge cost to the state did a shoddy job at repairing the plant.

Government last week announced that the ongoing power crisis had been triggered by repair works on the thermal plant.

The Energy Ministry was compelled to fly in experts from the UK based Wood Group to deal with the problem.

But it emerged today that the experts did a shoddy job forcing the managers of the plant to shut it down after they had left.

Officials have fired a strong petition on the matter and are set to take on the UK based Wood group.

Nana Osafo Kantanka Adjei, Managing Director of the Takoradi International Company in charge of the T2 power plant, told Joy FM’s Top Story management of the plant realized-after the experts had left, it was not getting the full capacity to complement the national grid.

He could not tell when the plant would bounce back until they fully identify what the actual cause is.

The exercise, he said, will entail ‘a little more of investigation and exploration to get them back’.

Nana Osafo Kantanka Adjei is however hoping ‘by the end of this month we will bring it into service’.

With the current energy crisis, the closure of the plant which adds 110 megawatts power to the national grid will ‘put pressure on us, put pressure on government and pressure on the system’, he said.

Under the current circumstance, it is ‘not the best time to be going through this kind of experience’, he added.

This is not the first time the Wood Group, renowned service providers, have been engaged by the government of Ghana, and the T2 managing director admits such incidents don’t ‘come easily and simply’.

He also conceded that the combusting turbines have run for 14 years without going through routine inspection, which is not the best way of maintaining these plants.

Over the years, what the country does is to ‘stop and start’ the unit, he said.

Nana Osafo Kantanka Adjei said the Wood Group has flown in ‘very senior’ personnel and are on site monitoring the plant 24 hours to ensure that the ‘unit comes back into service within the shortest possible time’.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Energy says it is yet to receive the full facts about the poor work done by the Wood Group.

Deputy Energy Minister, John Jinapor told Joy News the substantive minister, who is out of town, would be briefed upon his return so that he can make a definite statement on the matter.